[Avodah] what is death- what is life?

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

(Note: Somehow, the title of this thread got changed to "Kashrus and genetic manipulation". I'm using the original title.)

R' Chaim Manaster wondered about a case where a decapitated human is attached to a special heart-lung machine which restores or sustains life in that body:

> Thus, the survival of the body on the (special) heart-lung
> machine might still be considered a techias hameisim of the
> body from which it might still be assur to harvest organs
> from, if that "kills" him now as it would in harvesting the
> heart and lungs etc.

I was unfamiliar with this concept of "techias hameisim of the body", and RCM clarified it to me offline, writing:

> What I meant was that the attaching of the heart-lung machine
> was in lieu of and the equivalent of reattaching the head both
> achieving the same result of keeping the now reattached body
> "alive." How do you know that there is something more special
> about the head than any other "device" that would keep the rest
> of the body alive?

I think that the answer to RCM's question (what is more special about the head) is this, according to the Igros Moshe: If an arm or a leg would be severed, no one would suggest the person is already dead, though it is of course a very serious medical problem. But I think the whole point of the Igros Moshe is to show that this is NOT the case regarding the head: If the *head* is severed, then the person *is* dead, and this is true even if we would have the ability to reattach the head, so it is certainly true where we do *not* have the ability to reattach the head.

But, to be honest, I think there is still room for disagreement. One could still ask what is so special about the head. What makes the head different than an arm or leg?

RCM seems to suggest that the main function of the head is to make breathing possible, and therefore a breathing machine might be an acceptable alternative. Or perhaps the importance of the head is because decapitation causes such a severe loss of blood that it was considered immediate death, and this too is perhaps something that your hypothetical machine might solve.

But my view -- which I absolutely canNOT prove in any way -- is that the head is an "interface" between the body and the neshama, and the severing of that interface is the very definition of death.

It is noteworthy to see the context of the Igros Moshe that I quoted. The paragraph I cited (Y"D 2:174, bottom right paragraph on page 288) concerns a decapitation, but the greater context of the teshuva concerns heart transplants. The view of that Igros Moshe is that a heart transplant operation constitutes murder of the *recipient*, because until the point that the surgeons remove his sick heart, at least he *has* a heart; but after they remove his sick heart, he is dead by definition (despite the heart-lung machine!), and subsequent revival by implanting a new heart is not sufficient to justify the murder.

The parallels to RCM's case are obvious: If a patient on a heart-lung machine is considered a murder victim because his heart was removed, so too for one who had his head removed.

But it seems to me that other poskim do not agree with this Igros Moshe. Whenever I read of a posek who writes on the topic, they seem to say that Rav Moshe's REAL objection to heart transplants was the low success rate in that generation, and they seem to feel that with improved longevity of such patients, he wouldn't object nowadays. For an example of evidence that he did in fact change his view on this, see footnote #12 at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/HeartTransplants.pdf

Such an argument seems to ignore everything that I've quoted about the decapitation case. But I'm not privy to Rav Moshe's thoughts, and I only know what he published in his Igros Moshe, and that seems to be something which defines death for all generations, as he himself wrote: "even if the doctor would have the ability".

But if there are other poskim who do allow a person to be a heart transplant recipient -- and indeed there are -- and who do not consider such a patient to be dead while his heart has been removed and the new heart has not yet been implanted, then perhaps the same could be said of a person who has no head, yet has been attached to such a machine.

According to those other poskim, I imagine that two critical questions would be: (1) Am I correct about the head being a connection between the body and the neshama? (2) Am I correct that severing the connection between the body and the neshama is the very definition of death? -- If I am wrong on *either* of those points, then I would imagine that the body in RCM's case might be considered alive, and so it would be assur to harvest transplant organs therefrom.

Akiva Miller

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